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MSDN TechTalk: Quality Enablement with Visual Studio 2012

This week i participated on a Microsoft-TechTalk. Microsoft showed the new Team Foundation Server 2012 and its functions. I summarize the hot topics of the new features.

Feedback Manager

A cool feature is the Feedback Manager. Steakholders and customers can give feedback with this tool. The user can give feedback by Screenshots, Notes, Video or Audio. These Feedbacks are written diretly into TFS database. So the agile development team can plan these feedbacks for the next sprints. According to Microsoft, there is no special license necessary and can be used by all involved people (product owner, customer, steakholder, etc.).

Storyboarding Tool

Directly integrated into the Visual Studio 2012 is the Storyboarding Tool. It is an Add-In-Template for Power Point with most used UI-Shapes. This function helps to design a screen in a draft manner for describing UI-functions.

It is possible to link the work items together from Power Point or open the Storyboarding Tool for example directly from the Feedback Manager.

Exploratory Testing

The most interesting topic for me was the integrated Exploratory Testing function in TFS Testing Center. In the beginning the developer or testing specialist can define the mandatory Exploratory Test Tour steps. When the test case is defined a tester can start with its testing tour. All user interaction will be recorded in backgroud. For each event the TFS creates code fragments. This means the test can for further testing automated or for debugging purposes reproduced at all time with code calls. With TFS is also possible to to share these test steps for other test steps (for example, when you have to do always the same parts => login screen, etc.). These Explorative Testing functions may also be used as a template for a Load Test (execute these tests on 50 virtual instances).

Maybe you know somebody in your company which knows the application real good and can test the application in a real fast manner but is not willing to describe test cases. With this function you can record his testing in a automatic way and reproduce at anytime. During this process TFS Testing Center allows to record the a video, audio, etc.

Most important is the intellitrace and recorded stacktrace which allows to bring you the application in a fast manner into the debugging state when a bug occurs. This is a real cool feature an will be used hardly in future!!

Reporting

The TFS supports rich reporting functions for all needs of an Agile Software Development team. TFS can for example create an Excel Document where its data is still connected to TFS. This means every change in Excel will change directly the content in TFS. This function is interesting for copy paste or other bulk editing. In the current TFS edition there are all standard diagram which are needed by agile software development teams (Burn-Down-Chart, etc.).

Summary

Microsoft has integrated some pretty cool functions in its newest TFS-Release. The focus was improving the Agile Software Development process support, more Integrated Testing and Development and improving reporting functions.